Homily for the feast of the Holy Family
There are two ways in which we can approach today's feast of the Holy Family. In the more specific, restricted sense the Church urges us to celebrate and imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth, consisting of real personalities, Joseph, his wife Mary and their son Jesus. The second broader approach is hinted by our second reading this morning: the first letter of John. "My dear people, we are already the children of God but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed; all we know is that when it is revealed, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is." In baptism, we joined a holy family, with God for a common father, Jesus for a common brother and the Holy Spirit who gives us our life and our energy. This morning we have two new family members, Sean and Lily Rose.
I suspect that, in many cases, the last thing we want to hear about on the first Sunday morning after Christmas is the sheer bliss of family life. Some of you may well have been force out to Mass this miserable morning by a sever bout of cabin fever brought on by a prolonged exposure to your own family! By now you will have a very good idea of how far removed it is from the Nazarene ideal. You are all familiar with the formal family photograph album. There you will find a photographic record of your family gathered for formal occasions like baptisms, and weddings. Everything is very staid, formal and correct. Everything is staged and staid. The hair is combed and the clothes are spotless. Everyone is standing still in their correct, allotted positions. When you look at this image, this photograph and try to match it with the reality, you will say to yourself: 'How very different image and reality are.' Because you know the hours of preparation that went into the staging of that image. That formal frozen frame could never capture the energy and the turmoil that gave that lot their identity and their life. In fact you know that the formal photograph is a complete set-up, an artificial masking of reality.
But our image of the Holy Family can be distorted in this same manner. Medieval artists set out to do for the Holy Family what today's photographers do for our families. Now as long as we know the conventions in operation it doesn't matter. Our critical faculties will supply the necessary correctives. But, unfortunately, we have been trained to suspend our critical faculties when dealing with our received images of the Holy Family. Consequently that energetic and interesting family has been reduced to a bloodless cliché. Mary and Joseph have been portrayed as fawning parents living in awe of their wonder-working son. We are left with the impression that it was Jesus who formed the personalities of Joseph and Mary rather than the other way around. Here the child was truly regarded as father of the man! Both the Holy Family and ourselves are damaged by this approach: Firstly, it underestimates the very active role that Mary and Joseph played in the formation of the character of Jesus; secondly, through elevating it out of reality altogether, it destroys the Holy Family as a role model for our own families.
Indeed from today's extract we see that the Holy Family confronted the harsh reality of life and death in the very early days of the infant's life. This is no snap shot for a picture postcard. This is the stuff of survival. St. Luke's gospel is more explicit still on the inner tensions of the Nazarene family. He gets lost for three days and has his parents sick with worry. When they eventually find him he has a smart answer for his mother: "Did you not know I must be about my father's business." We see there at work the tensions and strains so familiar to the rest of us. Every twelve-year-old that ever existed has an answer for his mother.
There is a religious and social impression abroad of the family as a happy, tension-free religious and social unit. This image is often portrayed in TV game shows of the American variety. If we fall for this sort of stuff, we will soon be forced into the conclusion that there is something wrong with our own crowd. Our families are the places where we are all allowed make our mistakes in security. The family is the anvil upon which our personalities are formed. If there is no friction, there will be no formation. Where there is no tension, there will be no growth. It is reassuring to learn from the gospels that the family at Nazareth was no different.